On the Ball Beany

ON THE BALL BEANY
La Vista
Feb 26/96
by Anwar Brett

Sean Bean is best-loved in Britain as the
rough diamond Sharpe. He's a world-wide star after playing the
villainous 006 in GoldenEye opposite Pierce Brosnan. But in his
next role, Bean gets to play a part very close to his heart...
as a footballer for Sheffield United in the new film When Saturday
Comes.

On the face of it Sean Bean has had the
most schizophrenic of careers. All the films he has made that
gave him exposure to international audiences - the likes of Patriot
Games, The Field and GoldenEye - have cast him as a slavering
bad guy.

But to British audiences he is the latest
working class actor made good, following in the tradition established
by Albert Finney, Tom Courtenay, Richard Harris and Peter O'Toole.
Sharpe, his ever popular small screen incarnation, is the very
epitome of that ethos.

His latest role as Jimmy Muir, pub team
star footballer turned Sheffield United pro, in When Saturday
Comes, should send the message home with the precision of a sweetly
hit Gazza free kick.

And after years of graft on stage, television
and in film Bean deserves no less. He is currently one of the
busiest actors around moving from his Sharpe duties in the Crimea
to Hollywood and then back to his native Sheffield.

Even when Pierce Brosnan's Bond debut was
unveiled to the world's press last January Bean stole the show,
with a fleeting photo-call before a helicopter could whisk him
back to his spiritual home - Bramall Lane.

"That was an extraordinary day,"
he smiles, still hardly able to believe his luck. "I went
straight from meeting the Press in Watford back to Sheffield United
to get changed into my kit. It was just like being James Bond
himself.

"Making GoldenEye was the biggest thing
I've been involved in, but it was incredible thrill to pull on
that shirt and play in front of the crowd. It wasn't a full crowd,
but it was still several thousand. Running out onto the pitch
at Bramall Lane is one of the most exhilarating experiences I've
ever known.

"When I was at the RSC I appeared before
14 or 1500, but nobody shouts at you there. I've never experienced
anything like playing in front of the Kop at Sheffield and I don't
think I'll ever experience anything like it again. It took me
a long time to come down off that buzz."

A sporting drama, with a romantic sub plot
involving Emily Lloyd and her ludicrous Oirish accent, When Saturday
Comes follows the familiar path of a young prospect who gets a
second chance to prove his football skills, then appears to have
lost his chance but finally comes good.

And as with any sporting movie the result
is less important than the way in which the game is played, especially
as there has never been a football movie that has proved entirely
satisfactory for fans of the beautiful game.

So with the setting and style the filmmakers
have wisely aimed more for This Sporting Life than Escape to Victory.
Bean is pleased with the comparison.

"This Sporting Life is one of my favourite
films, so it's nice to be mentioned in the same breath,"
he nods.

"But when we were preparing the film
we found that a lot of people won't touch films about football
because they've seen them done before and I don't think they've
had a great amount of success.

"A lot of directors say that they wouldn't
touch a football film because you can't reproduce the actual matches
very well, you can't get any sort of atmosphere. So as well as
putting a few fancy moves together we concentrated on communicating
the spirit of the game.

"Anyway, we couldn't afford 14 cameras
like they had on Escape to Victory. With only five weeks of shooting
in the middle of winter, we were pretty hard pressed by the weather
and we had to get it together pretty quickly."

In the final scenes Jimmy makes good and
faces the might of Manchester United, but much earlier in the
film Jimmy is a rough diamond in need of the personal attention
of a dedicated coach.

"When I went up there and started filming
it, I found parallels with the life I used to lead in Sheffield
growing up and that - and sometimes fantasy gets wrapped up with
reality, because it's very close to home, very close to me. And
maybe it could have been another road I took.

"To be honest I wasn't that brilliant
at football. I could knock it about a bit, but it's not anything
that I could have pursued professionally. But going up there and
playing the part of a footballer is the next best thing. I think
I chose the right thing anyway because by now I'd be finished
as a footballer. I'd have had to have opened a boozer."

As with any movie the story was shot out
of sequence requiring Bean to remember just how good or bad he
was in any given scene.

"It wasn't a problem" he acknowledges
modestly. "I just tried to be good all the time because I
knew I was going to be crap.

"But when I was training with Sheffield
United (the then manager) Dave Bassett just treated me the same
as everybody else. He'd be shouting and bawling telling me what
to do: 'come on Beany, lift your feet'."

In one particularly crucial scene Bean is
required to take a vital penalty, a tough enough prospect in any
match, but even worse when the scene depends on it and the ball
has to go flying into a certain spot. And worse when the filming
is done in a half-time mock-up game when Sheffield United are
entertaining Manchester United at home in the cup, so the action
appears to have Bean's Muir up against the likes of Cantona and
Giggs.

"I kept slotting the penalties in the
bottom left hand corner, and I was alright at that but then I
was told I had to get it in the top right corner, within a six-inch
square.

"I kept hitting the bar, and every
time I missed the crowd would go 'WOOOOO' as if I'd just clipped
the post. Sometimes I'd missed by about six foot! It's an amazing
experience. But the crowd really got behind me and sang along
and cheered me on, every time I scored a penalty. Which weren't
very often!

"That ten minutes were an incredible
moment in my life. It took me a long time to come down after that,
just from the high I got from being on there, taking penalties
in front of your home crowd in the kit of the club that you've
supported all your life. I had to have about ten pints of lager
to bring me back down to normality."

At least his wife is understanding of a
husband who has "100% BLADE", Sheffield United's nickname,
tattooed on his arm. Best known for her role as Aveline in Bread,
and a co- star in When Saturday Comes, Melanie Hill recognises
the fulfilment of a boyhood fantasy for her husband in pulling
on the red and white and running out with his beloved United.

"I love the team and want them to do
well," she insists, "but sometimes I get really annoyed
because if Sean's got a day off he has to go and see them.

"When I was on stage in Bournemouth
doing Bread he once left me with a temperature of 105 to go and
watch them. He put a bowl beside me, got me a clean towel and
then left.

"But it's the only time he really relaxes,
when he goes up with his mates and watches them play. Even when
we got married we only had one day's honeymoon because United
were playing the next day."

"It was a bit of a football honeymoon,"
admits Bean. "But it was a crucial stage, 1990, when we got
promotion and it was all the games towards the end. You can't
miss one because it's too important. You've got to get your priorities
right."

Above all his wife is glad to have finished
the film unscathed, for if her experience is anything to go by
then the plight of a fan's wife is infinitely preferable to being
married to a player.

"I was covered in bruises during filming,"
she sighs. "While Sean was making the film he obviously kept
dreaming about playing for Sheffield United because he would kick
me out of bed and think he'd scored."